Cassini and the Crown Jewel • 2016 • episode "S1E2" • Space Probes

6:31

It's hard to get to space.But there is a concept that might make it possible: the space elevator. How exactly does it work.

In a Nutshell • 2016 • Astronomy

50:00

Jupiter is a massive and dangerous planet, surrounded by a wreath of deadly radiation. This is the story of how humans built machines that not only survived the perils of the huge gas giant but revealed its innermost secrets.

S1E5 • Secrets of the Solar System • 2020 • Astronomy

58:53

Documentary marking the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space. It was hailed by the Soviet Union as a triumph for socialist science over capitalism, but the true story is much stranger. George Carey's film shows how the Soviet space programme was kick-started by a mystic who taught that science would make us immortal, and carried forward by a scientist who believed that we should evolve into super-humans who could leave our overcrowded planet to colonise the universe. Stranger still, Carey shows how those ideas have survived Communism and adapted themselves to the science of the modern world.

2011 • Astronomy

83:44

Nasa intends to send astronauts to Mars. To succeed, crew members will have to overcome unprecedented, life-threatening challenges, and while many of these hazards are physical, the most elusive are psychological. Throughout the expected three-year absence, crew members won't be able to communicate with Earth in real time due to the immense distance. The psychological impact of this level of disconnectedness and isolation - both from mission control and loved ones - is impossible to predict and endangers the mission itself. Directed to mitigate this threat is Dr Al Holland, a Nasa psychologist whose job is to keep astronauts mentally stable in space. The Longest Goodbye follows Holland, rookie astronauts Kayla Barron and Matthias Maurer and former astronaut Cady Coleman, among others, as they grapple with the tension between their dream of reaching new frontiers and the basic human need to stay connected to home.

2023 • Astronomy

89:09

When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969, America went down in popular history as the winner of the space race. But that history is bunk. The real pioneers of space exploration were the Soviet cosmonauts. This documentary combines rare and unseen archive footage with interviews with the surviving cosmonauts to tell the fascinating and at times terrifying story of how the Russians led us into the space age. A particular highlight is Alexei Leonov, the man who performed the first spacewalk, explaining how he found himself trapped outside his spacecraft 500 miles above the Earth.

2014 • Astronomy

47:15

It's not enough for Earth to be habitable; it also has to be lethal for life to thrive. This is the story of how life evolved hand in hand with death. Astronaut host – Jerry Linenger

5/10 • One Strange Rock • 2018 • Astronomy